The Story

There are two sides to the story, “they” say. But really, there’s simply the story, driven by yearnings challenged and yearnings thwarted.

I thought of this after hearing a Houston couple (my age or older) interviewed over the weekend about what it meant for them to meet 45 (I cannot write his name). The husband glowed from having touched his (small) golden hand. The only thing that would match her husband’s feeling about this hand touching, his wife said, would be when he meets Jesus after he dies.

I could not find charity in my heart for them. My most uncharitable thought was that Darwin was wrong in his theory of evolution: this was a profound example of survival of the least fit. They had, I was certain, already procreated so their genes had replicated. You can’t fix stupid.

Then I thought, Jesus would roll over in his grave if he heard himself being equated with this man who, as Bill Moyers says, has an open sore in place of his soul. But Jesus rose from the dead, or so the story goes, so there is no grave in which he can roll over.

I find myself in this dilemma: as a writer, I must have compassion for my characters. I need to feel deeply that the character is right from the character’s point of view. I need to become god-like in the world I am creating, with a heart so open, I grasp the ordeal it is to be human and find some shred of compassion for being human.

Being human in a world that has no sense in the way we want to make sense of things. This happened because of that. If we do that, this won’t happen. God does things with infinite wisdom so that’s why He loves us more than those people over there who look so different from us.

I do believe there is an Infinite Wisdom out there, but it isn’t a being that is hamstrung by hubris. It isn’t the god of Abraham who asked that he sacrifice his son to show his absolute fealty to the Will of god. I’ve always thought that god was a total asshole.

The Infinite Wisdom I believe in is the one that comprises life and the inevitability of death. Humans, like all living creatures, planets, stars, and so on, begin and then they come to an end. And, now, having just written that, I wonder if the story of Abraham was a metaphor for my version of the Infinite Wisdom. In the end, we are subject to the Infinite Wisdom and sometimes that means we suffer the incomprehensible—losing a child.

I keep trying to wrap my head around the Abraham and Isaac story.

But, I digress.

I’m having a real hard time feeing charitable to anyone who voted for 45 and still believes it was the right decision. I especially feel that way towards those that associate Jesus with you-know-who.

This isn’t political. It’s moral. The story being written is sadistic, cruel, and profoundly solipsistic. It is a secular story disguised as sacred text. A retelling of the Midas touch, only people forget the end of the tale—the daughter of Midas runs to embrace him with love, and dies—the embrace turns her into a gold statue.

This story that is being written by he-who-I-shall-not-name does not end well. Holocausts never do.

The media this weekend fell all over themselves lauding you-know-who with praise, hoping against hope that he was learning to be presidential, that he was learning empathy. Well, Joy Reid didn’t fall for it. He’s 71 she said. This is who he is. He’s the man with the Midas touch—the touch that kills love. (She didn’t say the Midas touch part, that’s me.)

I don’t know what to do. I have been filled with blind, impotent rage, waiting for the Republicans in charge to choose country, love, morality, kindness over crass desire for power. They tend to be white boys and it is my belief that what they want is the power to make the world conform to their own image. To have the Midas touch.

This latest decision to betray the Dreamers is the final straw for me. I cannot abide anyone who doesn’t see or feel the cruelty in that decision.

I was hoping by writing this I would be able to find my way through—to finding just the right action to take. I haven’t.

What I have done is let go of the pressure to see that there are two sides to every story. No. There is just the story—and where that can take us.

Right now, the story we see unfolding is a secular one disguised as sacred text. Finite wisdom.